When life hands you Cleveland...

This past Tuesday, I got up at 2:30 am (ow.) to catch a 6 am flight to Buffalo (via O’Hare), where I met my friend Barbara and her friend (who is now my friend) Jenn, at which point we collected a rental car (not without hilarity ensuing) and drove to Niagara Falls, Canadian side.

The trip wasn’t exactly how I’d originally planned it. Gowan (aka Lawrence Gowan, keyboardist of Styx) was playing three solo shows, and I had tickets to all three. But then my original travel partner backed out, leaving me with (a) no one to share a rental car with (and the attendant problem of appalling night vision) and (b) no one to share a hotel room with. In other words, twice the cost right there. Barbara and I had talked about sharing a room, but she had to leave Friday because she had somewhere to be on Saturday. I have to give her credit for suggesting I come out for just the two shows, because I honestly never thought of it. After initial internal resistance, I reminded myself that two shows were better than none, and booked that godawfully early flight so I’d arrive at about the same time as Barbara and Jenn. (Minor perk: I was able to use miles to go first class in that direction.) It still all wasn’t going to be cheap (B&J also wanted to stay at a hotel that was twice as much as what I’d budgeted), but it was going to be worth it.

Leaving on Friday gutted me. I’d had such a blast, and the second concert was better than the first, and I knew the third would be even better than that. Band members had expressed their sadness that we were leaving. I found out Jenn might have stayed…but I’d already sold my Friday ticket (plus my original travel buddy’s ticket).

We said our sad farewells at the airport and parted ways. It was a short hop to Cleveland, where I’d catch my flight to LAX.

But that was not to be.

I got to Cleveland only to learn my flight had been cancelled, and they couldn’t book me on another flight until the following afternoon. It was all I could do not to sit down wearing my Moonlight Desires T-shirt, put on my Gowan concert playlist, and cry.

After standing in line for an hour and a half to get booked on a direct flight leaving at 5 pm Saturday (rather than the original 2:30 pm flight that would go to Dulles first and get me in later than the 5 pm flight, WTF?), I pulled my shit together, booked a hotel (they gave me a voucher for a discount on a hotel*, but I was put on hold and my phone was dying so I said fuck that), and off I went.

And you know, the more I thought about it, the more grateful I was. The delay sucked mightily, there’s no two ways about that. But there are far worse things, and I found myself reflecting on how lucky I really am.

• The two shows were fabulous. I never thought I’d see Gowan solo live, and now I’ve done it four times (eight shows total) in three years (he squeezes them in between 100+ Styx shows a year).
• I got to hang out with some of the band members and a couple of the crew, all of whom are genuinely nice people who are fun to get to know.
• I made a new friend (Jennifer) and got to spend time with old friends I don’t see nearly enough (Barbara, Jo, Andrea, Marci) (I know I’m forgetting people. I’m sorry. I really do love you all; I just killed those brain cells with alcohol.)
• Although I tried to keep the cost of the trip down, I have a credit card, and the hotel and extra meals, etc., aren’t going to break the bank.
• The hotel had a spa. I sat in it. The bed was excellent. I slept hard and long, and lo, it was good.
• The airport had free wifi so I was able to get a solid couple hours of copyediting work in.
• I got an exit row on the flight, plus there’s nobody in the middle seat, so I don’t feel cramped and can stretch out and work.
• For that matter, I have a fantastically wonderful laptop that has great battery life and is light so lugging it around airports isn’t awful.
• I didn’t have anything major scheduled today. I lost a workout with my trainer, which was pre-paid, but another couple was trying to get home for her mother’s 90^th birthday….
• Ken will pick me up at the airport, and there will be smooching; and then we’ll have dinner at our go-to Thai place on the way home; and then there will probably be more smooching.

When life hands you Cleveland, make lemonade. Or something like that.

I’m writing this one the plane, so you’ll read this after I’ve returned home. Right now, though, I just realized I have a short story due tomorrow that I forgot about until right now. I’ve started it, and I had to turn in a proposal for it, so I mostly know how it’s going to go. But I’ve got to write it now. Right fucking now.

Which, I suppose, means I’m also grateful for all those Oregon Writers Network workshops that taught me I can write a kickass story overnight…!

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*Because it was weather related, they don’t have to do anything. So yeah, I had to pay for a hotel and meals, as well as eat the cost of a booked training session at home. Thanks, United. Never again.

And then Bigfoot drop-kicked Alice Cooper....

“If you can spend a  perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.”  —Lin Yutang

Anyone following my Twitter/FB/G+ feeds Ssaturday knows that we abandoned any and all plans to do anything useful that day once I discovered SyFy was running a marathon of their cheesy movies. We grabbed our computers (because you don’t really have to watch the movies constantly) and settled ourselves onto the sofa.

More importantly, it was the one-year anniversary of Ken’s accident. Although we’d talked about doing something to celebrate his being alive (and healthier than he was before the accident!), we never nailed down what to do. What could be better than this?

We started our day with the tail end of Rage of the Yeti, which was just about as awfully good (or wonderfully bad) as the title suggests. We really didn’t have to see the first five-sixths of the movie to follow the plot.

Then it was on to The Lost Tribe, which apparently originally starred Jewel Staite, but then they rewrote/reshot it w/o her, which explains why the movie made little sense. I got a lot of email and online stuff during this one. Near the end, we never bothered unmuting it after a commercial break. Guess you also don’t need to hear these things, either….

The Lost Future appropriately came next. The DVR description promised Intense Sexual Situations (or something like that), but there were NONE, and I was PEEVED. It did have Sean Bean, though, and some other eye candy. During this one, I did some online publishing work.

Partway through Abominable, we mutually agreed that our brains were dribbling out of our ears and it was time to take a break. We made a batch of healthy popsicles (buttermilk, banana, raspberry, and honey), shoved those in the freezer, got out the ground beef and ground turkey to defrost for tonight’s meatloaf, acquired snacks, tidied the kitchen, and resumed our sprawl on the sofa. Ken burned some CDs we’d recently acquired (Amanda Palmer’s Several Attempts to Cover Songs by The Velvet Underground & Lou Reed* for Neil Gaiman as his Birthday Approaches [*and Other Stuff], Sun Domingo’s Songs for End Times [they opened for Marillion and we loved them], and Playing Away, a compilation of songs by members of Marillion with other projects), and then we returned to our orgy of visual media.

Our palate cleanser was The Young Victoria, our latest Netflix disc. Partway through the extras, we paused to make the meatloaf (meatslab, actually, because we had extra meat, so we flattened the whole thing so it would cook in the same amount of time), steamed Brussels sprouts, and salad. We watched an episode of Once Upon a Time with dinner (we’re still catching up on a few series—two more to go to finish out the season on this one).

Then it was on to Bigfoot. Danny Bonaduce! Sherilyn Fenn! Howard Hesseman! Barry Williams! This movie was made of cheesy win even before Bigfoot drop-kicked Alice Cooper. Special effects were awful, acting was dodgy, plot made no sense. But Bigfoot drop-kicked Alice Cooper…!

Wine was involved.

Finally, we also recorded Mega Python Vs. Gateroid, starring Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. I missed this one the first time around and was very sad. As yet, we haven’t had time to watch it, though.

So that was our Saturday. How was yours?

Wrap't

I just got home from a trip to Atlanta, with one sister and my mom and I visiting my other sister (more on that later), and I’m leaving tomorrow for two Marillion concerts in Hollywood (they haven’t toured the US in 15 years, and I think we got to see them only once when we lived in Wales), so I don’t have time for a proper journal entry.

But!

I’ve lost about 10 lbs and about 4% body fat in the last couple of months, and long story short, several people have asked me about salads and wraps. I love me some salad, boy howdy. Real Salad, not some namby-pamby wilted iceberg lettuce excuse for a salad. Salad with lots of interesting textures and explosions of taste and a tempting variety of colors. Crunchy veggies, a smattering of cheese, healthy fat in the form of avocado, filling protein.

(The word salad now officially is looking weird to me.)

So here you have them.

Salad #1

Good for a small dinner salad or a big entrée salad, the latter depending on how much protein you need.

• mixed greens of choice
• spinach
• fresh herbs if you’ve got them (I love basil)
• broccoli slaw
• tomatoes – I love little grape tomatoes, and I cut them in half so it’s easier to stab ‘em with my fork
• yellow pepper (or if you like green or red or orange, go for it)
• Persian (Trader Joe’s has them) or English cucumber (why do regular cucumbers have no taste?)
• thinly sliced red onion
• half an avocado
• garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
• bleu cheese (I like TJ’s crumbled Salem Bleu)
• balsamic vinaigrette (see below) 

Salad #2

Good for a big entrée salad because it has more protein. I have this for lunch a lot.

• same veggies as above
• delete bleu cheese
• add feta cheese
• add Kalamata/Greek olives if you so desire
• add single-serving packet of tuna
• delete vinaigrette
• add a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
• add red wine vinegar to taste

Balsamic Vinaigrette à la Dayle

• 1 part extra-virgin olive oil to 2 parts balsamic vinegar – I usually do ½ cup oil and 1 cup vinegar, because that fits nicely in the bottle I use. Do what works best for you.
• some sort of mixed seasoning of your choice. I like Trader Joe’s Italian seasoning mix because it has no added salt and is tasty.
• dried mustard
• finely chopped garlic if you want (I don’t because it’s hard to clean out of the bottle)

• pour oil and vinegar into a measuring cup
• sprinkle seasoning until it covers the surface of the liquid
• sprinkle mustard to taste
• whisk like a mad whisking person
• decant into a nice bottle for serving

Wrap #1, aka Greek Wrap

• Trader Joe’s organic whole wheat olive oil wrap
• hummus (I love Trader Joe’s Mediterranean)
• spinach
• fresh basil if you’ve got it
• thinly sliced red onion
• sliced grape tomatoes
• thinly sliced Persian cucumbers
• Kalamata/Greek olives, roughly chopped
• crumbled feta
• sprinkle of red wine vinegar if you remember (I usually forget, dammit)

• schmear wrap with two tbsp hummus
• add veggies and feta
• I like to add the spinach last and pile on as much as I can
• wrap the wrap, baybee
• eat up 

Wrap #2, aka Sandwich in a Wrap

• Trader Joe’s organic whole wheat olive oil wrap
• stoneground mustard
• good thin-sliced deli turkey that isn’t full of preservatives and additives and crap
• veggies of your choice (spinach unless you can’t keep it refrigerated, cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, etc.)
• half an avocado

Eine Klein Spanking by Clarice Clique

Today I have the pleasure of hosting Clarice Clique on my blog, as part of the Bound by Lust blog tour. Based on the steamy excerpt she's posted below, I'm looking forward to reading her story when I get my comp copies of the anthology! I hope you are, too.

~ ~ ~

I started writing erotic stories to amuse a close friend; a more creative way of flirting, or just me being plain slutty, I’ll let you decide!

That was years ago, but my story included in Bound by Lust, "Eine Klein Spanking," was written in the same way as my very first stories, with one special reader in mind. A friend of mine was going through a hard time, losing both his job and girlfriend in quick succession, and I wrote something that I hope would cheer him up.

"Eine Klein Spanking" is lighter than some of my other erotica, although it focuses on power relationships in BDSM play which is one of my favourite subjects as you’ll soon realise if you read any of my other stories.

I write about BDSM more than anything else, not just for the obvious reason that it is my own particular perversion, but because I like the drama and tension it naturally creates as my characters explore their own and each others’ limits. In ‘Eine Klein Spanking’ Audrey is an experienced sub, but when she falls for her new German neighbour she faces the problem of how to introduce her sexual kinkiness into their sweet romantic relationship. This is a situation a few of my friends have experienced; meeting someone at a fetish night skips all the need for explanation, chatting to the cute guy in the office means that at some point you have to work out if he’s the type that likes to spank or be spanked. I’ve been very lucky and found that my partners are all very open minded however innocent they appear on the outside.

Here is an excerpt from the book to whet your taste, this is Audrey’s first time with her German lover. Enjoy.

 ~ ~ ~ 

In the end my lust beat my patience down and I gave up waiting to be seduced. My first encounters were usually passion fuelled, clothes ripping, affairs that happened in alleyways, on staircases, in toilets, leaving my body raw and bruised. With my new German boyfriend I took his hand and led him upstairs to my bedroom, moved the big pink teddy off the bed, and we lay down together fully clothed and faced each other. I put my arms around him and we kissed, gentle loving kisses. My hands slid down the back of his jeans, I pressed my tongue between his lips and as he responded I moved my hand around to the front and began to slowly wank him. He moaned and rolled onto his back, I undid his belt and pulled his pants down. His cock was even larger than I’d imagined, I didn’t attempt to deep throat it, instead sucking and licking the head while one of my hands squeezed his balls. My other hand pulled up my skirt and I rubbed my thumb over my clit. I was happy tasting him, breathing in the scent of his sex, and waiting for the moment when his confidence and desire grew and he’d put his hands on the back of my head and pushed me down onto the full length of his cock.

 ~ ~ ~ 

And for your continued reading pleasure, here's the full blog tour list (the first name is the host, the second name is the guest):

June 11

Shanna Germain / Welcome

June 12

Janine Ashbless / Andrea Dale  (hey, that's me!)

June 13

Rachel Kramer Bussel / Sharazade

June 14

Allison Wonderland / Craig Sorensen

June 15

Lisabet / Shanna Germain

June 18

Andrea Dale / Clarice Clique

June 19

Erotica for All / Kristina Wright

June 20

Alison Tyler/ Alison Tyler

June 21

Nikki Magennis / Allison Wonderland

June 22

Kristina Wright / Kristina Lloyd

June 25

Clarice Clique / Justine Elyot

  

June 26

Vida Bailey / Veronica Wilde

June 27

Veronica Wilde / Teresa Noelle Roberts

June 28

TBD / Alana Noel Voth

June 29

Kristina Lloyd / Nikki Magennis

July 2

Jeremy Edwards / Vida Bailey

July 3

Teresa Noelle Roberts / Janine Ashbless

July 4

Dorla Moorehouse / Review & Excerpt

July 5

Justine Elyot / Donna George Storey

July 6

Shanna Germain / Closing

WOW back atcha

I know that, as an author, I shouldn't read reviews of my work. Everyone says to have a trusted person read your reviews and send you only the good ones—because while a good review is a squee-worthy experience, a bad review has the ability to trump a million good reviews and that's all you remember and focus on.

But I am weak, and sometimes I succumb*, and having just received comp copies of several anthologies containing my stories, I found myself drifting over to Amazon to see how they were faring.

And I saw a review for Lustfully Ever After: Fairy Tale Erotic Romance, that said in part,

I could go on and on, but if I were forced to choose a favorite under pain of torture, I would have to say "Steadfast" by Andrea Dale. Maybe it's just because I've got a little bit of a military fetish thing going on right now (me and Mr. James Jones - we got a thing going on), but WOW. When I write in all caps like that, that means it was a hella powerful story, emotionally, sexually and psychologically. I tip my hat to you, Ms. Andrea Dale.

WOW indeed. I tip my hat to you, Erin O'Riordan, and thank you more than you could know for your kind words. I took some chances with this story—I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone to write in a different style. I didn't know, in the end, whether it worked. When the editor, the lovely Kristina Wright, bought it, for me that was proof that I'd succeeded. A review like this just blows me away, as it reaffirms that challenging myself really did pay off.

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*and I have no first reader for reviews. Applications welcome. Must be consistent and reliable. And like smut and speculative fiction and other stuff. And be willing to put up with my idiosyncracies.

Hail the squee!

Now is the time on this blog when I once again squee about a new publication. Because, well, I can’t help it. If you don’t like it…fuck, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. Girl’s gotta squee.

I don’t have Bound by Lust (edited by the smoking-hot Shanna Germain) in my eager hands yet, but oh, I wish I did! It contains my story “A Few Things to Pick Up On Your Way Home,” aka “Oh Crap, Dayle Wrote Another Stupidly Long Title Again.”*

Aaaaanyway, we-all are doing a blog tour to get you all hot and bothered about the anthology. I hope you’ll wander over to Janine Ashbless’s blog on the 12^th to say hi to me, and that you’ll pop in here on the 18^th to meet Clarice Clique. Here's the full blog tour list (the first name is the host, the second name is the guest):

June 11

Shanna Germain / Welcome

June 12

Janine Ashbless / Andrea Dale  (hey, that's me!)

June 13

Rachel Kramer Bussel / Sharazade

June 14

Allison Wonderland / Craig Sorensen

June 15

Lisabet / Shanna Germain

June 18

Andrea Dale / Clarice Clique

June 19

Erotica for All / Kristina Wright

June 20

Alison Tyler/ Alison Tyler

June 21

Nikki Magennis / Allison Wonderland

June 22

Kristina Wright / Kristina Lloyd

June 25

Clarice Clique / Justine Elyot

  

June 26

Vida Bailey / Veronica Wilde

June 27

Veronica Wilde / Teresa Noelle Roberts

June 28

TBD / Alana Noel Voth

June 29

Kristina Lloyd / Nikki Magennis

July 2

Jeremy Edwards / Vida Bailey

July 3

Teresa Noelle Roberts / Janine Ashbless

July 4

Dorla Moorehouse / Review & Excerpt

July 5

Justine Elyot / Donna George Storey

July 6

Shanna Germain / Closing 

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*What? I didn’t use a song title? What…what the hell, man?